New York Yankees' deep 2017 postseason run a sign of things to come, not a fluke

2017 may have lacked the desired result, but these young Yankees should be feared going forward.(AP)

The sting from Saturday night's disappointing Game 7 loss to the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series is sure to linger in the minds of every Yankees fan and player for some time, but it won't be long before the immense achievements made by this team during the regular season rise to the forefront.

This was a Yankees team that entered the year with cautious optimism that it might be capable of snagging a second Wild Card spot, and making a little bit of noise in the postseason, much less a team destined to take out the defending AL champions en route to an improbable Game 7 appearance in the ALCS against a 100+ win team.

Breakout seasons from players like Aaron Judge (Rookie of the Year shoo-in and MVP hopeful), Gary Sanchez (2016's Rookie of the Year runner-up) and Luis Severino (likely 3rd-place finisher in the 2017 Cy Young race) not only carried the Yankees to a surprising 91-win season, but they played with a poise and maturity not commonly found in players under the age of 25.

This year, three different Yankees aged 25-and-under (Judge, Sanchez and Greg Bird) hit at least three home runs amid their postseason run. Only three other Yankees in the entire history of the franchise hadhit three-or-more homers before the age of 25 in one postseason: Lou Gehrig in 1928, Charlie Keller in 1939 and Mickey Mantle in 1956.

To think that in all the years the Yankees were dominating the rest of baseball, piling up World Series championships and unbreakable records, they'd had just three young players make the kind of powerful impact at the plate that three Baby Bombers all made in 2017 (and will continue to make for the foreseeable future) is remarkable.

To boot, shortstop Didi Gregorius also hit three home runs this postseason, but at the grizzled old age of 27, he just missed the cut.

The New York Yankees will face no small number of uncertainties this offseason: Will Joe Girardi return as manager? Will CC Sabathia return to the rotation? Will Masahiro Tanaka opt out? Will Todd Frazier be back in some capacity? And while those questions will be answered in due time, the number of concrete certainties entering 2018 are what fans should be wildly optimistic about.

This Yankees team, while boasting one of the most formidable young cores of high-ceiling position players in the Majors, still has a bevy of potential game-changing talents knocking on the door in the minor league ranks.

Even after the re-tooling moves made by general manager Brian Cashman in 2016, and the win-now trades made this past trade deadline (acquiring Sonny Gray, David Robertson, Todd Frazier, Tommy Kahnle and Jaime Garcia), New York still has five of MLB's top-100 prospects waiting for their opportunity to have an impact at the MLB level.

As Joel Sherman of the Post recently pointed out, this 2017 iteration of the New York Yankees is perhaps the worst the team will be at any point over the next five years. One scout Sherman spoke with went as far as saying the Yankees "are going to be scary good for a while," while another suggested that "there is no doubt they are primed for a real run again."

So as Yankees fans wake up on Sunday still reeling from the painful loss to Houston and the reality of the season's abrupt conclusion, all signs indicate that deep postseason runs like this will once again be the norm for baseball's most storied and successful franchise, and not the kind of pleasant and unexpected surprise it was this season.

There are 158 days remaining until Opening Day 2018, when the Yankees will get another chance to show that this team's success on the national stage was not a fluke, but rather a sign of things to come.